


Dog is an Elf’s Best Friend

by anistarrose



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: (the true hieronymous wiggenstaff was the dog we met along the way), Angst, Gen, Graduation Arc, Hiero Dog Theory, now wildly out of date because I wrote this when the second episode came out lol, warning for very brief eye horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-30 22:55:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21436063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anistarrose/pseuds/anistarrose
Summary: The summer before our series is set, two brothers search for the cure to a curse and are led to the Unknown Forest.
Relationships: Hieronymous Wiggenstaff & Higglemas Wiggenstaff
Comments: 8
Kudos: 19





	Dog is an Elf’s Best Friend

**Author's Note:**

> I can’t be completely sure because I can’t read Travis’s mind and I don’t know what canon is going to do, but this is _probably_ an AU. Some parts are based of [a theory I think is pretty plausible,](https://anistarrose.tumblr.com/post/188790769951/anistarrose-crack-theory-the-current) but other parts are bigger stretches.

Each year, when the hottest months arrive and the students leave their Wiggenstaff dorms to visit family or pursue summer employment, there are exactly four faculty members who remain on campus. One is Hernández, who stays to take care of the resident animals, and the second is of course Groundsy, whose true motivations remain an enigma to all but is ostensibly present to repair the tower and maintain the grounds as needed.

The third is Higglemas Wiggenstaff. They say you have a better chance of catching him outside of his office in the summer than you do during the school year, but it’s still a rare occurrence. Most rooms in Wiggenstaff’s, and in the Annex in particular, get so hot in the summer that they’re practically suffocating — but rumor has it that Higglemas can and _will_ open a portal to the Plane of Air itself, if that’s what it takes to ventilate his office and keep it at a liveable temperature.

(Most students — especially the magic users themselves, who know just how much skill it requires to open such a portal — take this rumor with a grain of salt. Higglemas has been locking himself away like this for years, but has yet to emerge from his office with any grand innovation or discovery to show for it — how competent of a wizard can he really be?)

Unbeknownst to all but Higglemas himself, the fourth faculty member is Higglemas’s dog.

At first impression, and even second and third impression, nothing seems unusual about the collie that wanders the halls of the Annex — at least, nothing more unusual than what would be expected from a pet of Higglemas’s. He’s a well-trained dog, usually aloof but occasionally willing to accept bribes in the form of food, and he seems intelligent, but not uncannily so.

But this impression of mundanity, while incorrect, is a testament to the dog’s ability to keep a secret. And as luck would have it, this ability just so happens to run in the family.

***

Today, there are two deliveries for Higglemas waiting at the wrought-iron gate to the Annex. When the dog fetches them from the courier and brings them to his office, Higg immediately tears off the brown paper covering the larger of the two packages and begins leafing through the book in search of its section on polymorph spells. He hunches over the his desk, ignoring the second package, and presses his thumb to his middle finger to stem the flow of blood from a papercut he’s given himself in his haste.

“Hrm. Smoke from mahogany wood, that might be worth investigating…” he mutters, sloppily underlining a passage in the ancient tome with a ragged-looking quill pen. Then he cross-references his notes, and scowls. “No, what am I thinking? We’ve tried mahogany wood _twice_ now!”

He slams the book closed. “We’ve tried _every_ type of wood by now! We’ve tried every damn combination of components in all of Nua — and none of them have done a single thing!”

The dog whimpers, nudging the second package closer to Higg. It’s a small burlap sack, containing several loaves of bread and sugary pastries ordered from the bakery in Last Hope.

The dog cannot speak, but his message is clear: _You’ll never find the right components if you forget to eat and collapse from starvation._

Higg reluctantly breaks off a tiny piece of crust from one of the loaves, popping it into his mouth as he pulls out another book. Unsatisfied, the dog leaps up onto the desk, trampling all over Higg’s notes and setting the bag of food down directly on top of the book, where Higg can’t possibly ignore it.

“Oh, fuck off, Hiero!” Higg snaps. “Do you _want_ to be stuck like this forever?”

Hiero huffs and jumps down off the desk, storming off to disappear behind one of the office’s many bookshelves.

Higg sighs. “Okay, fine! I’ll eat — look!” He magically slices two pieces of bread off of the loaf and puts a piece of cheese between them, then takes a bite and makes exaggerated chewing motions. “See, there it goes! Down the pipe! You don’t need to get all sulky on me!”

Hiero doesn’t emerge from behind the bookshelf.

“I didn’t mean to snap at you like that, okay? I’m sorry.” Higg puts his head in his hands. “It’s just — it’s been five fucking years, and I haven’t come up with _anything_, Hiero. I don’t know how much longer I can _do_ this. Someone’s bound to figure us out sooner or later…”

He swivels around in his chair, pulling open the curtains covering the office’s sole window and gazing outside towards the Unknown Forest with unfocused eyes. 

“Everyone knows you would’ve saved me a long time ago, if _I’d_ gotten cursed,” he whispers. “But I’ve tried every idea I can think of, every single spell component I know, and you’re still a dog…”

Hiero pokes his head out from his hiding place just in time to see his brother abruptly lean closer to the window, a smile suddenly spreading across his face.

“So that means the missing piece of the puzzle must be _unknown_ to us, so to speak…” Higgs muses out loud.

Hiero barks so loud that it startles a bird flying by outside. _You’d _better_ not be planning what I think you’re planning! You’re just going to get yourself killed!_

But Higg is already on his way to the door, throwing on a cloak and dusting off a longsword that hasn’t seen use in decades.

“Quit being such a worrywart, Hiero. I’m going to the Unknown Forest, I’m gonna burn some of the shit I find there, and then I’m going to get you back to normal.”

***

The smoke is the most vital component of a potent True Polymorph spell, on that much all sources agree. A cloud of smoke can change shape unlike any other substance, responding instantaneously to even the gentle guidance of a faint breeze. It represents impermanence and entropy, and the delicate act of channeling something fluid into a different, yet recognizable form.

But Higg has found all sorts of differing accounts on what _type_ of smoke works best. Not all of them are contradictory — some recommend burnt driftwood specifically for a transformation into a sea creature, and others endorse candle smoke with a dash of copper sprinkled in for bats and other nocturnal creatures. Others still swear by a piece of parchment with writing on it, ideally a few words that evoke the creature one is trying to transform into.

But there is no recorded precedent, much less a scientific consensus, on how to reverse a curse and turn one’s brother from a dog back into an elf, so Higg has resorted to simply trying every possible combination of components he can think of. He still consults old texts from time to time, but neither research nor trial and error have resulted in even the faintest hint of a lead.

Hence his current plan: walking straight into the deadliest forest on Nua. Somewhere in between storming out of his office, and finding himself in the northeast corner of the campus green, he’s come to accept that it’s one of his worst plans ever — but it’s also the only plan he has left, and there’s no plan that’s worse than not trying _anything_. 

He notices that Hiero is trotting after him, lagging behind by a few dozen feet. As much as Higg hates the idea of Hiero following him into the forest, his presence is oddly reassuring, because it tells Higg that even despite their earlier spat, his brother _does_ still worry about him charging off to his death.

_We really have flipped our old hero-sidekick dynamic on its head these past few years, haven’t we…_

“You’re not heading to the Unknown Forest, are ya, Wiggs?” 

Groundsy’s voice makes Higg jump — the groundskeeper, despite his impressive height and lumbering gait, always seems to appear out of nowhere even when Higg is completely expecting to run into him.

“I _am_ heading in, but not so far that I lose sight of daylight. I’ll hurry back out at the first sign of trouble, I assure you.” Higg’s impression of Hiero’s voice is flawless, as is his disguise spell. (It _has_ to be, in order for him to run the school in his brother’s place while he puzzles out the polymorph curse.)

“Well, what in the world _for_? You’re about to take quite a risk here, Wiggs — what reward are ya hoping to reap from this little expedition?”

Higg summons every ounce of elfin disdain he can muster as he replies: “Need I remind you, Groundsy, that you are in my employ — and so accordingly, I don’t have to justify myself to you? With my unmatched wisdom, I selected this particular site for my school out of nearly a hundred alternatives, and I have lived in the tower above this forest for over two centuries! If _anyone_ knows what is or isn’t worth venturing into the Unknown Forest for, it would be me — the astute and frankly _legendary_ Hieronymous Wiggenstaff! So put a bit more faith into your headmaster and let me go about my business uninterrupted, would you?”

Hiero’s ears twitch with a fair amount of elfin disdain of his own as he listens. _This is no longer an “impression” of me. This is flat-out caricature._

Groundsy doesn’t seem too bothered by so-called-Hieronymous’s scathing rebuke. “Well, if ya find yourself in trouble, ya can always call for help!” he reminds Higg. “I won’t come in to rescue ya, but it’ll make the story more interesting when I tell everyone how the _legendary Hieronymous Wiggenstaff_ met his match!”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Higg replies dryly. He puts his hand on the hilt of his sword, about to march into the forest, but Groundsy speaks up again:

“Oh, that’s a new sword, isn’t it?”

“My usual blade is out being resharpened by an expert smith,” Higg fibs. “I’m borrowing this one from Higglemas — since we have about the same build, and _he_ certainly never uses it.”

“Borrowing his dog too, I see! Will you be using him to lead you through the forest by scent?”

“The dog goes where he pleases. I don’t have any say over it.” Higg turns around to give Hiero a glare. “Though I _hope_ he has enough common sense not to follow me into the woods. He has no magic, no sword — he wouldn’t last a minute in there.”

“Oh, I’ll keep an eye on him for ya! Groundsy’s great with animals!” Groundsy kneels down to pet Hiero, who backs away and growls.

“Try and get along for just a few minutes, you two,” Higg tells them. “This shouldn’t take me very long.”

_And if it does take longer than a minute or two, you’ll have more pressing concerns than each other’s company._

He casts Light on his sword as he steps closer to the woods, holding it out at arm’s length to illuminate the uneven terrain beneath his feet. He passes several jagged, half-buried boulders and treads across dead and gnarled old roots left behind by a long-gone tree, then warily comes to a halt a few feet away from the forest’s edge. Behind him, the sun is just as bright as one would expect from a cloudless summer day, but in front of him, it’s dark like midnight on the night of a new moon.

He hears Hiero whimper from a safe distance away, but he doesn’t turn back. There is a sapling at the edge of the tree line, bearing only a dozen or so leaves on each of its wiry branches, and he confidently strides towards it, gripping the thinnest-looking branch in a gloved hand and preparing to snap it off —

It doesn’t break. The branch is as rigid as steel, and feels deathly cold even through the insulation of his glove. 

“Damn it, why didn’t I just bring a fucking axe?” Higg shivers, reluctantly raising his sword. He’d hate to damage it trying to chop down an unnaturally hardy tree, but collecting branches by hand wasn’t working, and he _won’t_ let this perilous trip turn out to be for nothing.

Hiero barks as Higg swings his sword down, and Higg jumps, missing the sapling entirely.

“What the hell was that about? Don’t _do_ that when I’m holding a bladed weapon —”

Hiero barks again, more urgently this time, and a realization dawns on Higg a second too late. 

The tree roots he’d mistaken for dead have come very much alive — now they’re coiling around his feet, snaking up his boots, constricting his legs. As Hiero let’s out another frantic howl, they jerk violently, yanking Higgs off balance and dragging him backwards into the Unknown Forest.

“Fuck!” Higg swings his sword wildly, desperately trying to cut his feet loose, but it bounces straight off the bark of the roots. Its light dims as he’s carried further into the woods, and every other second he either gets a faceful of prickling branches or feels his head slam into the trunk of a tree, leaving his face bloodied and ears ringing.

_Who’s going to save Hiero if I die in here? No one else even knows the truth —_

He plunges his sword into the ground, miraculously finding a narrow chink between two immobile, iron-hard roots and piercing deep into the cold earth beneath them. The force at his feet keeps pulling, but his grip on the hilt of his weapon stays firm, and he doesn’t budge.

“Take _that_, you abducting arboreal bastards!” he spits, pulling his wand from his pocket and blindly aiming a freezing blast of wind towards his feet.

The roots immediately convulse, jerking upwards and hoisting Higg and his sword vertically out of the ground — only to stop moving a second later, leaving him suspended in the air. They glimmer in the light of his now-freed blade, and he realizes with a smile that he’s frozen every damn inch of them solid.

“Good riddance,” he growls, and strikes them once more with his sword — and this time, they shatter into thousands of icy crystals.

He feels less triumphant after tumbling to the ground and landing a bit less gracefully than he’d like — and what’s more, he realizes he’s somehow lost his grip on his wand.

“Shit, shit, shit…” He swings his sword in wide arcs, trying to illuminate as much of the surrounding forest as he can. None of the trees here seem to be as mobile as the roots that captured him, but he still flinches every time he feels something brush against his ankle. Once he finds his wand, though, he’ll be able to just levitate above the treetops and _fly_ back to safety…

He glimpses a familiar polished marble rod atop a pile of ebony-dark leaves, but before he can pick it up, a chattering squirrel darts past and snatches it up beneath its teeth. Luckily, the creature doesn’t run far, instead opting to scamper up a tree and perch atop a low-hanging branch. It still holds the wand beneath its teeth as it stares at Higg with accusing eyes.

“I know I’m intruding on your territory, but I promise you, it wasn’t intentional,” Higg says softly, slowly stepping towards the squirrel and holding out an outstretched hand. “Now, I’d really appreciate it if you could just drop that wand you’re carrying…”

The squirrel’s tail erupts into purple flames and it snaps the solid stone wand between its teeth, chattering with delight as it stuffs the two halves into its mouth and gulps them down.

Higg hastily steps back, tightening his grip on his sword, but the squirrel darts away without another glance at him, and the forest falls eerily silent.

“Hiero?!” he shouts. “Groundsy? Can you hear me?!”

There’s no reply. And even worse, it dawns on him that he has _no idea_ which way he came from — if he’d broken any branches or left any sort of trail while being dragged in, the plants have already regrown to cover it.

If he dies here and leaves Hiero stuck as a dog forever, all because he didn’t recognize Hiero’s own warnings in time, then… well, that sure would be an appropriate way to cap off his miserable, failure-wracked life, wouldn’t it? Really, he should’ve seen this result coming from the first moment the idea of entering the Unknown Forest popped into his head —

_Think, Higglemas. Don’t give up, _think_. What would Hieronymous do to get his bearings?_

He gazes up towards the blanket of pitch black leaves overhead, through which only a few tiny pinpricks of starlight reach through…

_The stars, that’s it! _Higg is no scholar of astronomy, but he does know the major constellations, as well as the approximate geographic layout of the Unknown Forest as a whole — with the stars in view, he can surely deduce the fastest route back to safety. Rather than sheathing his sword and blocking his only source of light, he ties it to his belt, and he selects a climbable looking tree — offering a sturdy trunk, ample branches for handholds and footholds, and most importantly, roots that don’t come alive even after giving them an experimental poke.

But almost as soon as he begins to scale the tree, things go wrong. The bark is unnaturally slick, and initially stable footholds melt away beneath his boots, sending him sliding back down the trunk to land on his rear in a pool of foul-smelling oil.

“Damn it!” Higg takes a running start at a different tree, leaping for the lowest-hanging branch, but it liquifies in his hand, and once again he tumbles to the ground.

_So much for the stars saving me…_

A bush a few feet away from him rustles, and Higg freezes.

But the forest goes quiet.

Concluding that his imagination had worked against him, Higg lets out a sigh of relief — then the bush rustles again.

(_Is_ it the same bush? Or was the sound _closer_ this time?)

He draws his ever-dimming sword, and from the bush there comes an eerie creak, like a footstep on a floorboard. But at least it isn’t advancing towards him anymore — he can work with this.

He’s about to take the first of what would hopefully be many slow steps backwards, away from the rustling creature, when he hears it. Somewhere behind the bush, a dog is barking, and though it’s distant and muffled, Higg recognizes it instantly.

“Hiero! I’m coming!!” he shouts, and charges towards the bushes.

Between the cover of the plants and the cover of darkness, the being that lurches forward to meet him is difficult to perceive, but Higg glimpses it in brief flashes as he swings his blade —

_At least four spindly arms, probably more. Fingers whittled into points._

_Ash-grey bark peeling away to reveal eyes, so many eyes. Pulsating black pupils, surrounded by spiderwebs of crimson veins._

_A cavity between two forking branches, in which rows of fangs drip sickly-sweet sap._

Higg lets out a guttural roar and skewers the beast through its torso, casting its hollow body aside and sprinting onwards to the source of Hiero’s barks. But a stray vine trips him, and his heart skips a beat in his chest as he feels it ensnare his ankle in a familiar death grip —

Hiero springs out of the shadows, a terrifying bundle of momentum and determination in canine form, and barrels into the vine with so much force that even Higg gets jerked a few feet. The vine doesn’t release him, but it goes just limp enough for Higg to slip out of his trapped boot, and Hiero darts to his side as the two of them break into a run again without a single word exchanged.

If Higg didn’t know better, he would’ve sworn his brother had done this before. Hiero keeps his tail close to Higg’s legs and his nose close to the ground, barking and swinging his tail every few dozen feet to signal for Higg to turn. When they finally breach the tree line, they skid to a halt and whirl around to face the forest — Higg with his sword drawn, Hiero with haunches raised and teeth bared — and wait several terrifying seconds before finally collapsing to the ground, confident that no creatures will follow them out of the woods.

“Well, I’ll be a unicorn on the barn roof!” Groundsy begins to applaud, rushing to Higg’s side with a huge smile on his face. “Ya made it out in once piece, both you _and_ your dog!”

“He’s my brother’s dog, not mine —” Higg begins, before looking down at his hands and clothes and realizing that his Disguise Self spell is, of course, _long_ gone.

“Oh, don’t ya give me that schtick! Your secret is safe with me, Higgsy!” Groundsy tells him with a wink. 

Higg breathes a temporary sigh of relief, mentally debating the ethics of looking into a memory-erasing spell later. Unless huts are involved, Groundsy’s secret-keeping abilities usually leave much to be desired.

“From the looks of things, ya almost did kick the bucket in there,” Groundsy goes on. “I hope ya at least got ahold of whatever it was ya went in for?”

Higg plucks a few pointed twigs from his cloak and pants, holding them gingerly and cupping his free hand beneath them to catch the oil that they drip.

“Well, not quite in the way I wanted to. But I’m thinking this’ll suit my purposes just fine.”

***

Hiero sits impatiently at the center of a room that has seen many explosive fires and failed rituals, waiting for Higg to finish his preparations. There are circles of chalk that must be drawn, dust from previous failures that must be swept up, and most importantly, oil from the Unknown Forest that must be burned.

Higg watches the flames turn an unnatural purple color, pointing a freshly obtained wand at the bowl of oil and concentrating on channeling the smoke. As he directs wisps of it past his face and towards Hiero, he’s somewhat put off by how _normal_ it smells — it has a slightly more earthen scent than the usual flammable components he uses, but there’s nothing particularly _otherworldly_ about it. Nothing to indicate that this might be the breakthrough he’s awaited for years.

“Ready?” he asks Hiero, pushing his doubts to the back of his mind, and Hiero nods, sitting up on his hind legs. They’ve always speculated that a bipedal posture might help reversing the polymorph — though of course, it’s not like they’ve had any success to show for it.

Hiero holds his breath as Higg surrounds him with a plume of smoke and begins to chant, carefully enunciating words in a long-dead language that even most elves don’t remember. The room quickly darkens in a way that it never has before, as the smoke absorbs the ambient light and begins to glow in an inconsistent shimmering pattern that evokes stars scattered across a deep indigo sky.

Higg, too, holds his breath as thin wisps of that smoke coil around Hiero one at a time, slowly blending together and changing in shape. The obscured silhouette of a collie transforms, snout shortening and legs elongating — and then it all disperses with a sudden clap of wind, leaving behind an elfin man who instantly collapses to the floor.

“Higglemas?” Hiero croaks, staring down at his trembling hands. “Did we —”

He coughs up a cloud of acrid red smog, convulsing and arching his back.

“NO! WAIT! Do something, Higg! I can’t —”

Higg dives after his brother, eyes stinging from the fumes as Hiero’s voice breaks and distorts back into a howl. Higg wraps his arms around a thrashing collie, and Hiero goes limp, red-tinged foam still dripping from his mouth as his younger brother whispers:

“We’re getting so _close_, Hiero. Don’t give up on me now, not when we’re so damn close.”

Hiero whimpers weakly, hanging his head.

“We have a _lead_ now,” Higg continues, summoning all the optimism he can muster into his voice no matter how sick he felt watching Hiero revert. “And in just a few weeks, we’ll have a new class of students, too — odds are one of them will know their way around animals and shapeshifting.” 

He gently pats Hiero on the back, running his hand over fur until he can feel that Hiero has stopped trembling. “We’ve got more to go on than ever before. We’re going to figure this out one way or another, I promise.”

Hiero’s eyes close as he rests his head on Higg’s knee. _I hope so._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, comments are always welcomed! 
> 
> While I genuinely believe the Hiero Dog Theory as a whole has a lot of weight to it, certain parts of this are certainly going to get proven wrong sooner or later, but it was still extremely fun to write! I am historically a huge sucker for grumpy old men with hidden depths, so I got invested in Higglemas right away.
> 
> [(also on tumblr, if you want to reblog!)](https://anistarrose.tumblr.com/post/189070179501/dog-is-an-elfs-best-friend-taz-graduation)


End file.
